They come, they go.

• Author: Hood, John
• Position: Free & Clear

In good times and bad, companies shed workers and go out of business. Rather than try to control this, policymakers should cultivate job creation

According to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, North Carolina lost a bit more than 750,000 private-sector jobs last year. Doesn't that number look staggering? At the beginning of last year, businesses in the state employed about 3.3 million workers. So the job loss amounted to nearly a quarter of total private employment.

Before you starting wondering how you missed the onset of another Great Depression, let me hasten to point out that private employers also added nearly 825,000 jobs in the state last year. That represents new and existing companies hiring workers, just as the jobs lost represents existing companies shedding workers as well as businesses shutting down for good.

There is a great deal more chum in the labor market than many realize. That can lead to big differences in how people perceive their local or regional economies. Some hear about a big layoff or relocation and conclude that the economy must be getting worse. Others hear about a large employer expanding or moving into the area and conclude that things must be getting better. In reality, both type of events are going on at the same time pretty much everywhere in the country.

Consider Texas, which netted nearly 300,000 jobs in 2013. Its private-sector job-growth rate of 3% was one of the nation's highest. Yet in each quarter, Texas lost at least 5% of its prior private employment. Some businesses went kaput. Others downsized. Displaced workers had to find other jobs in their communities or move to places with stronger labor markets. What kept the economy healthy was that other companies added an average of 545,000 jobs every three months--an average job creation rate of 5.9% a quarter. Businesses in North Carolina created jobs at an even faster clip, but job losses were higher here than in Texas. The net result was that private employment in North Carolina grew 2.3%--about 75,000--in 2013. That was higher than the national average and an improvement over 2012 but not as sizzling a rate as Texas experienced.

About one in nine workers is self-employed. They aren't included in the private-sector employment statistics I've been citing, which are derived from surveys of businesses subject to unemployment-insurance taxes. Openings and closings among the self-employed are often higher than that for business...